We were thrilled to have our SEP Summer 2022 Hackathon in our new building and to be back in person for the event!
Our hackathon is an internal event where we invite SEP makers to participate for the weekend – anyone with an interest within our walls can join the fun. We see a mix of designers and engineers, various skill sets and backgrounds, and no limitations on which languages or types of projects are on the table.
A High-Level SEP Hackathon Overview
Friday afternoon
Our entire staff is invited to sit in on the all-important Pitch Session. Makers get five minutes and an option to show off a few slides to try to woo others to join their weekend project team. This year, we followed up the session with a menu of pizza, beers, and sodas while hopeful project leaders could schmooze and try to establish their teams.
Friday night
The hacking begins! After dinner, we regroup for a few minutes until teams are formed and each stakes out a spot to set up camp for the weekend. Then, it’s off to the races!
Saturday
The whole day is spent at our HQ in Westfield while project teams troubleshoot, plan, and otherwise bring their visions to life.
Sunday morning
Still coding!
Sunday afternoon
After lunch, it’s time to present your project status, successes, and learnings to the group. The Project Presentation meeting on Sunday afternoon is another opportunity for anyone at SEP to attend and celebrate the accomplishments of the weekend.
Summer 2022 Hackathon Projects
What projects made the cut this year? Here’s a recap:
Score Changer Scoreboard
Project Concept: A Bring-Your-Own Scoreboard for Baseball/Softball
Technologies: BLE, ESP32, Mobile, Flutter, Dart, Arduino, 3D-printing, Cricut
Jon coaches his daughters’ softball team and wanted a quick, simple way to know the score, the inning, and the count in the dugout. A team of about 10 makers created the app and developed a hardware prototype by the end of the weekend.
Deep Rock Galactic Modding
Project Concept: Game modifications for Deep Rock Galactic
Technologies: Unreal
Andrew led this crew of four to assess the specific game modification goals. After digging into requirements and realizing that some end goals were not an option, the team decided not to pursue the project further.
Filmer
Project Concept: Movie Night Maker App
Technologies: React Native
When Deep Rock Galactic project didn’t pan out, Andrew switch gears to an app to help you find the right movie. Friends could connect in the app to help decide what to watch on movie night. By recording which movies you’ve seen, the group can easily filter out the list of options to make a quicker pick. By the weekend’s end, we were able to see a simple demo and development is ongoing.
SEP AV Training Materials
Project Concept: Created training videos for SEP AV use
Technologies: DaVinci Resolve
Nathan set out to beef up his video editing skills and demo creation experience. He worked on documentation for SEP’s meeting room AV systems, and those videos are now housed in our internal knowledge base for easy reference.
WatchMySpot
Project Concept: Dog-watching cooperative app
Technologies: .NET MAUI (C#/XAML)
Alex envisioned a simple mobile app for exchanging hours for dog-watching. The main goal during the hackathon weekend was to get experience with app development in .NET MAUI. Alex has plans for the app to continue to evolve more later.
NextGenVPN
Project Concept: Build a VPN tool that addressed specific pain points
Technologies: Mikrotik RouterOS, OpenVPN, SSTP, osquery, Zig
Sasha led a group of three makers to explore opportunities to improve the VPN tool we use at SEP. The effort is still ongoing.
Experimenting with React Redux
Project Concept: Experimented with the global state that Redux provides
Technologies: React, React-Redux
David’s goal was to get more experience with Redux for future use-case scenarios. Through his tinkering at the Hackathon, he gained experience and ideas for more interesting Redux projects in the future.
BLE Mesh LED Controller
Project Concept: Understanding BLE Mesh by creating a mesh network of LED lights
Technologies: BLE MESH, C, ESP 32’s
Luke and Paul worked with LED lights to sync various strips around the room from one device using a Bluetooth mesh network. By Sunday afternoon, they had a demo working with LED lighting hardware utilizing the network controls from their device.
Bloggen
Project Concept: Create a command line tool for sharing notes written in markdown
Technologies: Python, JS, HTML, GCP
Lee wanted a simple blog generator that returns your directory or single markdown file as a publish URL rendered as HTML. He planned to get it from Pypi and run it anywhere that has python. At the Hackathon, he created the tool that allows central and global access for any of his notes.
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For many of our makers, the project doesn’t end when the weekend is up. Depending on what languages they used or how close they are to a shippable product, some projects continue on in the makers’ free time for weeks or months afterward. And any transferrable knowledge to project work is put to use as soon as possible for our clients. We love this creative tradition and look forward to next time!
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Check out our current openings for your chance to make awesome things with creative, curious people.
